


The Red and the Black

by scullywolf



Series: TXF: Scenes in Between [111]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Gen, Introspection, MSR, Missing Scene, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-02
Updated: 2015-12-02
Packaged: 2018-05-04 11:34:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5332664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scullywolf/pseuds/scullywolf





	The Red and the Black

_“What happened?”  
“I don’t know.”_

Mulder didn’t know _what_ to believe anymore. Every time he thought he had it figured out, every time he was sure of the truth, something came along and flipped his entire worldview on its ear.

My sister was taken from us. 

She was abducted by aliens.

She was abducted by men.

My father forced my mother to choose one of us.

The choice was never hers to make.

Samantha is dead.

Samantha is alive.

The government is behind it all.

The military is working outside government control.

There never were any aliens.

There were always aliens.

Scully’s fingers tightened around his, bringing him back to the present. Right. They were under military arrest. Again. The MPs were going to have a field day when he told them he couldn’t remember anything after climbing in the truck. He kept trying, but he just couldn’t quite… 

“Mulder?”

He dropped the hand that was pressing on his forehead again and turned to look at her, blinking. Her brow was creased in concern.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m trying to remember, I just… There’s nothing. I got on the truck and then… nothing.”

She sighed. “They’re not going to believe you.”

“Yeah, well… what else is new?”

She squeezed his hand again, and two uniformed men opened the car’s front doors and sat down inside. Neither said anything as the driver started the ignition and put the car into gear.

“Where are you taking us?” Scully asked.

The men didn’t answer, but they didn’t have to. There was nowhere to take them except back to the base. The real question was whether they would actually be charged with anything or stuck in a military prison without due process of law. The worst they could nail them with was attempting to enter a secured facility without authorization; whatever had been on that truck was gone, no trace left behind. Then again, when had lack of evidence ever stopped the military from coming up with bogus reasons to keep people behind bars?

It wasn’t until they passed the front entrance to the air force base that Mulder spoke up.

“Hey. What the hell is going on? Where are we going?” Silence. “We’re federal agents. You can’t just--”

“Mulder.”

Ahead of them, parked on a dirt road just off the highway, were three vehicles, including Mulder’s own car. They pulled up behind them and stopped. The two men in the front got out, but instead of coming around to let Mulder and Scully out of the back, they walked to the front of the car and stood at attention. Another man walked toward them, high ranking by what Mulder could see of his uniform in the car’s headlights. He returned the salutes of the two MPs and approached their car, then got in the front seat. The four stars on his epaulets glinted in the car’s dome light, and Mulder wondered what in the hell a four-star general was doing meeting them off-base in a car on the side of the road.

“You are going to tell me why two FBI agents were trying to get onto my base under false pretenses, and you are going to tell me right now.”

Getting right to the point, then.

“What difference does it make?” Mulder said. “We didn’t see anything.”

“You hijacked a military transport! Why?!”

“I didn’t hijack anything. If there was ever actually anything on that transport, if it wasn’t all just another ruse, it’s gone now, but I had nothing to do with it.”

“Damn it, I want to know what in God’s name you were looking for!”

“Sir, may I ask why we’re being questioned in a car on the side of the road?” Scully asked. “If we are under arrest, any interrogation should by law be recorded, and we have the right to legal representation, even in the military justice system.”

The general scowled. “Answer the question!”

It slowly dawned on Mulder what Scully had apparently already realized.

“You can’t hold us, can you?”

“You are not getting out of this car until I have some answers!”

“Well, then I guess we’re all going to be here a long time, because we don’t have any answers to give you.”

“A prisoner has escaped! If you were in any way complicit, I do not care _whose_ protection you are under, I _will_ see you held responsible.”

So someone had given an order for them to be released, and Mulder was pretty damned sure it wasn’t Skinner. Probably not anyone else at the FBI, either.

“And what’s the ‘official’ story on this supposed prisoner? Actually, you know what? Don’t bother. You could tell me it’s some terrorist or you could tell me it’s an alien rebel, and I honestly wouldn’t believe either one.” At the words ‘alien rebel,’ the general blanched, just subtly enough that Mulder might have imagined it. “In any case, we didn’t have anything to do with any of it. Regardless of what we may have come here looking for, the escape or abduction or rescue or whatever the hell that was would have happened whether we were here or not.”

The general’s jaw muscle bulged as he glared at them. Finally, after several long moments, he turned away and got stiffly out of the car. Mulder looked at Scully, who was looking back with raised eyebrows. He shrugged, and the two MPs returned to let them out of the car. The one on Mulder’s side handed Mulder back his service weapon, which he holstered with a nod.

“So,” Scully said once they were finally in Mulder’s car on the way back to his apartment, “do you think Krycek was telling the truth?”

He snorted. “I’m not sure that man is _capable_ of telling the truth.” He shook his head, sighing. “Then again, I’m not sure I would know the truth if I were looking right at it. I’m not sure of anything, anymore.”

“Mulder--”

“I was so certain, Scully, absolutely positive that I’d seen aliens. That I’d watched my sister get carried out a window in a beam of light. And then I was just as certain that it had all been a lie, that I’d been deceived along with the rest of the believers in UFO phenomena, that there could be no other truth but that the government and the military were behind everything.”

“And now?”

“Now I just don’t know what the fuck to believe.”


End file.
